The Truth About Being a Digital Nomad

Since I can remember I’ve Loved travel as a kid we’d go on one big foreign holiday every year. I remember the excitement. As the tickets arrived in the post soon, they’d unlocked passage to some mysterious, far away land. Of course, these days tickets are electronic, but I still love to travel and I’m definitely not alone. 35 million people now make the most of their location Independence as digital Nomads. This growing group of laptop workers are from diverse backgrounds, but are united by one common interest.

They want to experience living and working abroad if you’ve never done anything like this, maybe you’re wondering what kind of work digital Nomads actually do. I had the same question until I jumped in and tried it. There are three distinct categories of digital Nomad and fortunately none of them insists on you are working from the beach with the sun glaring on your laptop screen, which category will you fall into in the days before I realized that remote working was even a possibility.

I hopped between software development jobs a lot when I left a job. I always made sure to take a few months off. I taught English in ancient Italian towns. I stayed in homestays in Spanish, Hilltop Villages and I crossed 14 countries by train to reach southeast Asia, but there was a problem every time I went away. I’D eventually run out of money and I’d have to come back home and look for more work. It happened again and again don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed my work. It’s just that in my mind, work and travel were two separate activities, never to be combined until after one of these sabbaticals, I found a remote software development role.

I landed the job and soon became part of digital Nomads category 1, the remote employee.

If there’s one upside to the pandemic, it’s that more people than ever work remotely, often with the possibility of doing so from abroad.

These are the professionals previously associated with office, jobs, accountants, HR professionals, marketers’ designers and, of course, software developers. The list is endless: some companies have fully embraced location Independence, while others might take a little bit more convincing before you go ahead and book a flight. Fortunately, I earned the trust of the 100-person company. I was working for and in 2021 they let me go off and work from the Canary Islands. So, what was my first digital Nomad experience like?

Well, I could tell you about the subtropical climate or the sandy beaches stretching for miles or the Misty Mountain Top Pine forests. Instead, here are three key lessons. I learned from being a remote employee, digital Nomad one you’re, not on holiday. Your employer expects the same output as when you’re home. If you stop working, they stop sending you money.

2.Internet connections can be a little ropey on a Mid-Atlantic Island check the Airbnb description carefully before booking three. If you’re doing a full eight-hour workday, that could be most of the daylight hours gone so much for that sightseeing, of course, as an employee you’re in your employer’s pocket, whether you’re, home or away, want to work in the early morning or evening and spend the Daytime sightseeing you’re going to need a different approach.

That’s one of the reasons I quit my job in 2021. It helped me graduate to Category 2, the remote freelancer digital, nomad, A freelancer is anyone with specific skills that they can sell to clients on short to medium term projects, think web designers, copywriters, graphic designers, video editors. Of course, you want to plan carefully before going all in as remote freelancer, for example, how are you going to find clients if you get this off the ground, though you’ll have a lot more flexibility on when you actually complete your work.

This was my experience during a four-week trip to Finland. Last year, every morning I worked on setting up my client systems on Amazon web services, all from an Airbnb in the snowy north of the country, the rest of the time I took inspiring walks through the freezing landscapes sizzled in the saunas and uploaded GoPro footage to My secret Travel YouTube channel remote freelancing was more flexible, but definitely not without its cons for digital Nomads. Here are three lessons I learned one.

Your client is relying on you just because you want to spend the day husky sledding through the forests doesn’t mean they’re going to change their deadlines too. Clients can actually be quite flexible. I never had a client that expected immediate replies to emails or ever phoned me without first messaging. This really helps you to switch off when you’re away from the desk. Three calls with a client can be scheduled at inconvenient times. This can mess up your plans to get all your work done before your client is even logged in for the day, perhaps if they’re on a different time zone, you might be thinking.

This still sounds great working from remote locations with some flexibility around when you work I’d agree but remember. I said there were three digital Nomad categories. The third one is the Pinnacle: the ultimate way to experience life from another location as a remote entrepreneur, digital nomad, whilst the remote employee and remote freelancer trade time for money, the remote entrepreneur builds products to leverage their time.

I tried this earlier this year when I stayed in Europe’s digital, Nomad hotspot, Lisbon, I didn’t have an employer, I didn’t have any clients, but I was working on my own business, adding value to the marketplace with my own projects. Imagine the flexibility you could have as a solopreneur selling digital products that are both highly scalable and almost fully automated. That leaves a lot of time to ride trams around the city, eat, multiple Portuguese custard Tarts and get lost in beautiful, abandoned wine factories.

Having already had a taste of this lifestyle, here’s one important point to note with no boss or client to report to you need a way to stay focused to keep your business on track. If you spend all day every day, looking around the museums, you might never get your business off the ground to cover your living expenses. In the cafes of Lisbon, you see all three types of digital, Nomad working diligently from their laptops. I was inspired by all this people of all ages, trying to live their ideal life, but pushing the boundaries of what we think work can be.

After Decades of long commutes suits office politics, I believe digital Nomads are taking us to a more productive future, a healthier future, I’m all in next time. You see a video on this channel. It could be from anywhere how about you. Could you ever be a digital Nomad? Let me know down in the comments:

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